Worldnetdaily.com has the story here about "relandscaping" plans at a US military base in Kosovo that entail removing three crosses from outside the US army chapel there. Maybe Prozelytizing Marine should hand out his coins at the Pentagon.

This video clip (link below) has to be seen to believed by every citizen (over 18). In fact, even after seeing it and believing it, I don't know what to make of it besides the terrifying and inescapable fact that a man who may very well be the 44th president of the United States is not just out of his element, he is out of his mind. (Ditto, the giggling press corps, but we already knew that.)

Hat tip, my pal Pam of Atlas Shrugs, where you will also find her rather earthier assessment of the incident.

Today's Washington Post carries a story, first reported by McLatchey Newspapers, about a Marine based in Fallujah who has been "suspended" for handing out what the paper described as "only a few coins" inscribed in Arabic carrying two lines from the New Testament. One side of the silver-colored coin read: "Where will you spend eternity? (John 3:36)." The other side read: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)."

This, of course, comes under the heading of proselytzing, which military regulations prohibit. (Question: Is this regulation specific to Islamic countries? Has it always existed? I don't know.) But to get to main point, let's just say, OK, fine. Knock it off, Marine.

"Security chief decries `'war on terror,' " reads the Financial Times headline. Which security chief is that? Only the senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security Charles Allen. The paper reports:

The [W]est needs a more comprehensive strategy to counter al-Qaeda propaganda and the US should stop using the term “war on terror”, according to a top intelligence official.

Charles Allen, the senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, says the phrase is counter-productive because it creates “animus” in Islamic countries.

“[It] has nothing to do with political correctness,” Mr Allen said in an interview. “It is interpreted in the Muslim world as a war on Islam and we don’t need this.”

Hmmm. Think of all the other things that create "animus" in Islamic countries:...

From one of my favorite readers--sometimes known as "a retired cop friend of mine" (although it bears noting he also served as a police detective)--on his assessing an EU proposal to make terrorism, armed robbery, rape, and racism (including "Islamophobia") and xenophobia crimes throughout the EU, which, by the way, has been expanded to include North Africa and the Middle East.

He writes:

From Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:
Main Entry:
xe·no·pho·bia
Pronunciation:
\ˌze-nə-ˈfō-bē-ə, ˌzē-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
New Latin
Date:
1903
: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign
From your BLOG:
"...A proposed European Arrest Warrant...

El Aroud, the New York Times reports in considerable detail, is "one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe," exhorting Muslims to fight the jihad online from her home in Brussels. "It's not my role to set off bombs--that's ridiculous," she told the Times. "I have a weapon. It's to write. It's to speak out. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."

And so she continues, raving on about jihad. But what is most disturbing and train-wreck fascinating...

Just in from the noted European blogger Fjordman: Danmarks Radio-- Denmark's public radio station, which Fjordman calls the equivalent of the BBC "with the same Left-wing, multicultural political bias"--is sponsoring a beauty contest for headscarf-wearing women over age 15.

As the Copenhagen Post reports, "The radio station's youth club, 'Skum,' "--Skum?-- "is behind the project which they believe will display the 'cool Muslim women' who 'often make up a very fashion-conscious and style-confident part of the Danish street scene'. The competition is, however, also open to non-Muslim females."

Alas. Contentions, the blog of Commentary magazine, has a problem with this week's column. Abe Greenwald writes:

Over on her blog, Diana West gets a little hysterical about the fallout over the U.S. military sniper who shot up a Qur’an in Bagdhad.

Nice, ad hominem opener.

She objects to the reprimand the soldier received and the general air of apology from the U.S.

Which included, just to refresh, a deferential public apology from Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond during which another US officer presented the assembled locals (likely insurgents, not long ago) with a brand new Koran after kissing it. Abe then quotes briefly from my column:

(AKI) - The US soldier who shot a copy of the Koran should be punished as an example to others, according to a key Shia cleric sheikh Abdel Mahdi al-Karbalai.
Al-Karbalai, who represents the religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, called for punishment in a sermon read to the faithful during Friday prayers at the central mosque of Karbala.
"As well as being expelled, that soldier should suffer an exemplary punishment in a way that is an example to others," the Shia leader said.
"What happened in Baghdad, where a solider from the occupied forces was discovered shooting a copy of the sacred Koran, was a grave insult to the feelings of Muslims."
The imam of Karbala, the holy Shia city, dismissed the excuses advanced by the US military to the Iraqi premier Nouri...

Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, was kind enough to send me an article he wrote last fall documenting the similarities between "Mein Kampf" and the Koran--something I refer to in passing in today's column while examining the contrasting American reactions to the anti-semitism, supremacism, and totalitarianism of Mein Kampf in 1940 and the anti-infidelism, supremacism and totalitarianism of the Koran in 2008. Ray fills in the nitty-gritty (and fascinating) details here.

He concludes:

There should be little doubt at this point, of how similar the worldview delineated in The Al Qaeda Reader is to that...

Today's column came out of the editing chute a little late to make it into its regular Friday slots, such as The Washington Times. So, here it is, as promised:
Sniper shooting Koran hardly 'criminal behavior'
By Diana West
It is late August 1939. American columnist Augusta "Gusto" Nash, played by the incomparable Claudette Colbert in the 1940 movie "Arise, My Love," is sitting in a French railway car taking her from Paris (and love interest Ray Milland) to her next assignment: Adolph Hitler's Berlin. Not surprisingly, she is boning up for her new post in the Nazi capital by reading "Mein Kampf." Turning the pages, she looks increasingly disgusted, finally becoming incensed to the point where she slams the book shut and tosses it out the window.
The audience doesn't learn precisely what that final straw was, but given the book's notorious anti-Semitism, racism and militaristic plans for world domination, it's...

Me, I was always stopped cold by Sistani's "najis" list. You've heard of "My Favorite Things" ("Rainbows on roses and whiskers on kittens...")? Well, the najis list, as it appeared on Sistani's multilingual website, was what you might call His Un-favorite Things. They included urine, feces and other excretions, along with dogs, pigs, and "kafirs"--unbelievers in Islam. Call me crazy, but I always found it hard to cosy up to Sistani after that--and particularly after hearing about his ruling that...

Mr. Bush told a small group of Jewish, Palestinians and Israeli Arab students in Israel that they must be alert to the "poisonous" propaganda from state-owned radio and television stations in the Middle East that obstruct true peacemakers. He's right, of course. If we're serious about the pursuit of authentic peace, we must [also] be aware of the "sweet euphemisms" about radical Islam in American textbooks.

And not just serious about the pursuit of "authentic peace." If we're serious about preserving authentic freedom, we must do something about American textbook presentations of Islam, both "radical" and other. Here, via Family Security Matters, is "Islam in the Classroom," a five-part...

What does "Arise, My Love," a shimmering 1940 Mitchell Leisen-directed romance of the days before and after the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, have to do with events in Iraq this week after it was discovered that an American sniper had used a Koran for target practice?

With police now arresting cartoonists in The Netherlands, and bureacrats trying to shut the rest of us up with speech codes, Andrew G. Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, is here just in time. Not only is of sufficient heft to KO any would-be censor, it is also more than weighty enough--filled with facts, testimonies, letters, documents, analyses--to refute any Islamic apologist who wants to tell us how wonderful it is to be a Jew living under Islam. (And that includes, as one very perceptive review has already noticed, Bernard Lewis, whose academic imprimatur is on most of the failed Middle East policies of the last couple of decades, from Oslo to democratization.)

Gregorius Nekshot is the Dutch cartoonist arrested by Dutch police last week for cartoons he has posted on his website that lampoon Islam. Q: How do you say Totalitarian State in Dutch? In the video above (via Islam in Europe) , which is mainly in English, Nekschot explains the rationale behind his caricatures.

I've already columnized about President Bush's initial, vacuous and tear-your-hair-out revealing remarks on the 60th anniversary of Israeli statehood here.

What has subsequently generated a nice little political/media firestorm is this statement by the president in yesterday's speech before the Israeli Knesset:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

One of the more socially destructive aspects of the (Bill) Clinton legacy has been the elevation of Brazening It Out--"It" being the kind of scandal that once upon a time shamed politicians into resignation over breaching what were once widely recognized as the boundaries of propriety through extra-marital affairs, gambling, and other reckless behaviors.

GOP Sen. John Vitter of DC Madam infamy comes to mind as one who, pre-Bill (and Monica), would have quietly disappeared, but there are many others. GOP Rep. Vito Fosella, whose drunk-driving arrest led to revelations of a longstanding affair and illegitimate child with a retired Air Force Colonel --a lady--is still on the fence over whether he will resign or run for re-electon.

Generally thought to depict Mohammed prostrate beneath the bare feet of two angels, this 17th-century wooden sculpture by Mattheus van Beveren forms the base of the pulpit in the Catholic church of Our Lady of Dendermonde, a Dutch-speaking town in Belgium. The Brussels Journal first published the photo back in 2006 to point out, during the height of Cartoon Rage, that there is a "long tradition of depicting Mohammed in European iconography." The photo suddenly reappeared last Friday (May 9) on the front page of a Turkish newspaper above the caption: "Stop this hideous insult."

How do you "stop" a "hideous insult" that is literally carved into the religious, cultural and historical tradition of a nation? As The Brussels Journal notes, the sculpture dates to 1685, two years after the Siege of Vienna,...

A bona fide grown-up perspective on the San Diego State University narcotics ring, smashed by federal agents earlier this month, from Clint Taylor. (I wrote about the arrested development on display all over the drug bust aftermath here.)

Taylor adds a disturbing factoid, new to me, about narco-decadence as promoted by Yale University, which happens to be the alma mater of us both. He writes:

As for the drug issue, my own alma mater led the charge in narco-hypocrisy. When the federal government decided that tax dollars would no longer be spent on financial aid to students convicted of drug possession, Yale jumped in to announce in 2002 that the university would make up the difference for any student who lost his financial aid for that reason, effectively subsidizing...

"Vexed" and "entranced"? These marvelously quaint adjectives may sound like something out of a lecture on Victorian romantic poetry, but they are instead a part of the New York Times' attempt to put a hearts-and-flowers frame around a strikingly and revealingly intime feature depicting (whether the reporter realized it) the barbaric lack of male self-control in Islamic society that, at root, governs the relationship (if you can call it that) between Saudi men and their female chattel.

While the word "romance" appears in the piece 9 times; "romantic" 5 times, and "love" 9 times, the words "misogynistic," "nasty" and "brutish" are nowhere to be found. These words might have come in handy, for example, in this particularly "entrancing" bit:

Jimmy Kedoshim was standing in his garden on Friday evening in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in Israel not far from the Gaza border. His wife had just gone into the house when an Iranian-made Hamas-fired120-millimeter mortar shell came out of the clear night sky and landed in the garden, killing the 48-year-old father of three. He was buried Sunday.

New mortar shells being used by Hamas in Gaza are deadlier than even the most improved versions of the Kassam rockets though their range is limited. The 120-millimeter Iranian-produced shells carry a larger payload of explosives and their lack of rocket propulsion makes them impervious to the Color Red early-warning system that gives the region’s residents about ten to fifteen seconds to seek cover in the event...

If Speed Racer the cartoon movie--sorry, the "anime actioner"--only grossed half ($20 mill) of what the Warner Bros. stunted mentalities--I mean, studio sxecutives--thought it would on its opening weekend, maybe things aren't so bad after all ....

Got some good news and some bad news out of Congress this week for free speech enthusiasts.

Let's start with the bad news--if only so we can leave thinking the glass up there is half full.

Robert Spencer picked up word that Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, sponsored an amendment this week "to prohibit the intelligence community from adopting speech codes that encumber accurately describing the radical jihadist terrorists that attacked America and continue to threaten the homeland." This worthy, admirable and basic-common-sense amendment was shot down by Democrats on the Permanent House Committe on Intelligence. These Democrats include:

Seventy-five college students--including two seniors about to graduate with degrees, respectively, in criminal justice and homeland security--were arrested during a sting operation targeting illegal drugs at San Diego State University. While the arrests highlight a serious drug problem on campus--a student drug overdose last year prompted the investigation and another such death occurred during the investigation--what they also reveal are some all too good examples of post-adult behavior.

Here is what one professor had to say about the fact that university president Stephen Weber--an adult!--cooperated...

UPDATE: Andrew Bostom offers a trenchant reminder to Israel (and, by extension, to the US) how to stay here. Hint: It has to do with getting a grip on the Islamic institution of jihad--something Uncle Samdoesn't want us to do.

I can hardly imagine the reportorial elation that must have come to The Washington Times' Jerry Seper on discovering that "hundreds of pages of once-secret documents that detail the internal debates over whether [Mrs. Clinton] should have faced criminal charges" based on evidence that she had concealed information from and misled a federal grand jury during the Whitewater probe were available at the Library of Congress. Here is what he discovered, and in ain't pretty:
Ordinarily, such files containing grand jury evidence and prosecutors' deliberations are never made public. But the estate of Sam Dash, a lifelong Democrat who served as the ethics adviser to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, donated his documents from the infamous 1990s investigation to the Library of Congress after his 2004 death, unwittingly injecting into the public domain much of the testimony and evidence gathered...

Poring over the new no-Islam lexicon, brought to you by the US government--which everyone should read for himself at The Investigative Project--I was struck by a particularly egregious example of taqiyya, or Islamic deception. This is not something we should expect in a US government document, but welcome to "A Global Struggle for Security and Progress" (once known, lamely enough, as "the war on terror").

It is contained in "Expert Recommendation 6--Pay Attention to the discourse on takfirism" blah blah, which is supposed to be the new PC-acceptable word for the bad things jihadists do (NB: it's called " jihad").

The significant part of the government entry concerns the import of a 2005 conference...

Tie on your straitjacket and read this report from CNSNews.com about the Islamic outrage over an Illinois emergency-preparedness drill in which law enforcement agencies stormed a well-armed, jihadist "mosque" where hostages were being held.

"The use of a fake `mosque' in this type of drill sends the wrong message to law enforcement officials who may now view mainstream institutions, such as Islamic houses of worship as potential security threats," said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR's Chicago chapter.

Only "now," after this week's emergency-preparedness drill in Irving, Illinois, may law enforcement view mosques as potential security threats--not, say, after Freedom House's 2004-2005 report on...

I reference the above alliance between the Free West, as represented by Winnie and FDR, and Sheer Totalitarian Evil, as represented by Butcher Stalin, as a reminder of the lengths to which political and cultural opposites--enemies, in fact--will go to defeat a common threat, in this case (for benefit of those languishing in the US school system), Nazism.

I invoke this extreme historical reality to highlight the absurdity of a recent break in the anti-jihad Internet world--the banishment of the blog Gates of Vienna from the Pajamas Media network on the PJ-principle that a war-gaming essay pondering the potentially violent, potentially "genocidal" future of Islam in Europe that appeared on GoV rendered the blog insupportable, beyond the pale, outside the bounds, a gargoyle from Hell, etc. I am not comparing PJ Media to Winnie and FDR, however,...

When you are at an airline security checkpoint and filling plastic grey boxes with your coat and other clothing layers, with plastic Ziploc bags full of assorted tubes of lotions and cosmetics, with your laptop, with miscellaneous keys, cellphones, wristwatches, etc., and with--piece de resistance--your shoes, what goes through your mind as you pass through the metal detector in your stocking feet:

A) So, this is what it's like to be a member of the jet set

B) I wish I had worn better shoes (and socks)

C) Shrug: I guess this is the way life must be in times of "terror"

D) This is dhimmitude, pure and simple

I choose (D), naturally, and tend to fume over it to the point where I need to remind myself to cool it, lest I get pulled out of line by a kindly security guard just doing his job. Jihad chips away at religous...

Earlier his week, New York State Governor David Paterson signed a bill into law that is sure to help derail “libel tourists” in their attempts to take New York authors and publishers for a ride to the book-pulping machine via expensive, speech-chilling foreign libel suits.

The bill, the Libel Terrorism Protection Act (a.k.a. Rachel's Law), prohibits the enforcement of a foreign libel judgment unless a New York court determines that it satisfies the free speech and free press protections guaranteed by the First Amendment and the New York State Constitution. It also allows New York courts, under certain circumstances, to exercise jurisdiction over non-residents who obtain foreign libel judgments against New Yorkers.

This is fantastic news for liberty enthusiasts. But it didn't come out of thin air. This victory for free speech is due to the tenacious courage of author Rachel Ehrenfeld, the New Yorker who for nearly four years has battled to have a British default libel judgment against her--brought against her book Funding Evil by Saudi billionaire and "libel tourist" Khalid bin Mahfouz --declared unenforceable in the U.S. It is her ongoing case, which might well be described Abu-Dickensian in length and nefariousness, that inspired the bi-partisan bill that passed the New York State Legislature unanimously last month and was signed into law this week. New York's lawmakers and new governor are to be greatly commended for recognizing the need to act to protect our liberty.

The Death of the Grown-Up has been reviewed in the Spring 2008 edition of the prestigious Naval War College Review. I must say I feel greatly honored.

Here is the review by Jeffrey H. Norwitz, Professor of National Security Decision Making:

“Stop, before you hurt yourself! Why?
Because I said so”—a common diktat
from a caring parent to child, about setting
limits on behavior. The historical
role of grown-ups has been to nurture,
protect, and teach fledglings about
self-destructive behavior. So how, then,
is raising children the unifying theme of
a book about the decline of Western
civilization?
The answer, as Diana West argues convincingly,
is a direct correlation between
decades of moribund moral
norms, owing to vanishing societal maturity,
and America’s inability to grasp
the seriousness of emerging global dangers.
Like a child that keeps playing, unwilling
to obey the...

84 priests in the Danish church wrote an open letter, about the contrasts between Islam and Christianity. They say the two religions don't have much in common. The letter follows a letter written by the Danish Church Council in response to a 'call for dialog' from Muslim organizations.
The parish priests stress that Christians and Muslims don't talk about the same God. The signatories think that the council's letter had gone too far concerning the theological and ethical bands between Christianity and Islam, and say that the two religions are rather opposites of each other.
Theologist Katrine Winkel Holm and parish priest Jesper Bacher, both members of the Islam-critical Network (Islamkritisk...

Diana,
I read your book cover-to-cover. It is a remarkable depiction of the accelerating downward spiral of this "so-called" culture
I would like to call to your attention a new Cadillac television commercial...it is running frequently...
ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?
The opening line, by a "Mr. Country Club type"...
"LIFE IS HIGH SCHOOL WITH MONEY"

Well, there you have it....

Well, there I have it and my reader has it, but since seeing is believing, or so they say, here is the ad my reader wrote in about, which sells the Cadillac as a hyper-punky cruiser for cool-worshipping post (high school) graduates--i.e., the perpetual adolescent I write about, not just personified, but enshrined and slickified by Madison Avenue.